


The End of the Road

by somewhere_in_the_distance



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, References to Depression, Team Free Will (Supernatural), Team Free Will 2.0 (Supernatural), post-episode s15e18
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28686177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somewhere_in_the_distance/pseuds/somewhere_in_the_distance
Summary: Sometimes the Apocalypse doesn't come with a hole opening up in the ground, but with the world going silent.In the aftermath of losing the people they love, the Winchesters struggle to deal with their own demons. But they still have to hunt the monster of the week – God. The boys must confront Chuck in an ultimate showdown. And if they make it out alive, they will make sure they save everyone and restore their family.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	The End of the Road

**Author's Note:**

> The story immediately follows Season 15, Episode 18, and includes some scenes from Episode 19.

Death.

Always, _always_ death.

It never truly made sense to him. He had seen it everywhere around him ever since he was a child – people crumbling like ashes before they’ve even turned to ashes. It started with his mom, and it never fucking ended. The ashes took human shape all the time, crumbled again, returned and offered hope to him, then everything faltered once more. The cycle kept repeating. And with every crash, something broke further. Everything broke. And it would have been alright, he guessed, if no one toyed with the pieces. He would have been just fine with the clatter of the mess in his chest and the pressure in his head as long as the world didn’t change shape, as long as _his_ world remained secure.

Dean Winchester couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t tired. But he also knew that as long as he had his family around him, the exhaustion would allow him to live. As long as he had Sam and Cass, everything would be okay.

Everything would be fine.

_Fuck._

He could hear the phone ringing in the palm of his hand – _Sam_. But Dean couldn’t move. He couldn’t move, his back slumped against the wall, legs sprawled out in front of him. He felt like a corpse. He wanted to get a drink. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry, and he had. Dean had wept, as he always did – in silence and in isolation. But what comes after the crying is what he was afraid of. The phone rang again, and Dean had no idea what to tell Sam, or how to break the news.

After all, the world was ending.

And Cass.

Cass was gone.

There was a dull ache spreading across Dean’s chest, so that every time he took a breath, his body seemed to weigh him down further. When he finally answered Sam’s call, his lips trembled as he brought the phone to his ears. When Sam asked Dean where he was, he blinked and his vision swam slowly into focus. That’s right. He was in the bunker – their home. _Home?_ Shaking his head, Dean answered his brother’s question with another.

“Where are _you_?”

“Uh… Jack and I are outside,” Sam mumbled, sighing bleakly. “Dean, e-everyone else is gone.”

Dean frowned before asking further, “What are you talking about?”

“All people – Charlie, Bobby, Donna – just _everyone_ vanished. It– It’s a ghost town out here.”

He attempted to form words, to do his brotherly duty and tell Sam that they would fix this and that they would get through this. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he realised he could do neither. Dean had spent most – no, _all_ – of his life following his dad’s orders. Just like Castiel, he had kept up the role of the _‘good, little soldier’_. But Cass got out. He comprehended the power of his volition – of love – and he tried his hardest to make this world a better place. Oh, he tried so well. In essence, Cass – an angel – became more human than Dean ever would. He adored him for it. He adored the consistency with which Cass would build bridges where no one had asked him to, how he put out the fires others set to the bridges he constructed with hope, and how – no matter how Dean treated him, how Dean _broke_ him – he would always come back. No one in this world had ever come back to him the way Cass did. Dean had to hold on for dear life to keep people in his life. He even had to drag Sam back into the hunting life until it drowned them both well enough to make Sam stick around.

Cass always had his back.

Dean never did.

And he would spend all his days with that being at the top of the list of the regrets he had.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

“You? Where’s Cass?” Sam’s voice crackled across the line.

Dean looked at the empty space in front of him, the space from where Cass was taken into the darkness just minutes before. He replayed the one-sided conversation in his head – Cass’s last words. There was so much Dean wanted to say, but Cass was gone before he could. He heard it so loud the words caused physical pain. _‘I love you I love you I love you I love you.’_ _Why? You idiot._ Dean didn’t want to hear that. He was used to the absence of affection. It was easy. Everything was so easy that way. _So why? And why now? And why this way?_ It was his father’s voice creeping around his ears now, engraved so deep into the creases of his brain, he could never scrub it off even if he tried. He had been to Hell and returned, but John Winchester would never stop being the voice of reason in his head. And reason is the only thing that would get him through the end of the world.

_‘Saving people, hunting things – the family business.’ Yeah, well, you can’t save everyone, right?_

_No, no_ , Dean realised, _I can’t save anyone. And now Cass is dead too. And it’s all my fault. It’s all my fault it’s all my fault it’s all my fault._

_‘I love you.’_

_It’s all my fault._

“He’s dead, Sammy.”

By the time he hit the road, Dean was already on his second beer bottle, with more to come. The concrete, normally specked with people bordering it, was bare. Sam was right – everyone was dead. Chuck – _God_ – with his vengeful streak of crap had destroyed everyone, leaving the boys to suffer on their own. Dean felt sick at the thought of ever having trusted that man. After all that the brothers had done, that Cass and Jack had done, _this_ is how each one of them goes out? At the hands of a powerful being who was just playing with them like puppets. Nothing was ever in their control.

Everything Dean had ever done was at the will of God.

The idea was disgusting.

As the Impala sped past mile markers, Dean’s face hardened and softened both at the same time. There was a job waiting for him – hunting down another monster. This is how things worked, with the boys hitting a roadblock, falling apart, and getting back up. Always getting back up. He could do that. He could get back up. This wouldn’t break him. And no matter what happened, he would get Cass back. And Cass would get joy back. Dean decided he’d make sure of it. And while Dean mourned the absence of Castiel, Sam found himself thinking about Eileen. He felt foolish in his own way, for allowing himself to think he could get that normal life back. Of course, he had always wanted to be a normal kid and live a life outside of hunting. But he had also acclimated to the hunting life, and he was good at it. But it killed people, especially the people you loved.

So, Sam and Dean didn’t love.

And it took from them, nonetheless.

The boys were afraid now, they realised, not because they were up against the fiercest cosmic entity, but because the only people they had to lose had been lost. They were afraid that they wouldn’t see each other again, that Sam would never be able to touch Eileen again, that he wouldn’t be able to tell her how much she mattered to him, how much peace she brought him. And Dean was terrified that, when he finally found Cass within arm’s reach, he wouldn’t be able to say it back.

_I love you, too, Cass._

_I love you, too._


End file.
